The Challenge at the World Bank

The front-runner in the race to be the next president of the World Bank is both a half-decent rapper and a Korean-American physician and global-health expert who grew up in Iowa and is president of Dartmouth College. Jim Yong Kim has been nominated by President Obama to take up the post being vacated by Robert Zoellick in June, and he will likely win, due in large part to a gentleman’s agreement between the U.S. and Europe that has given the U.S. the power to choose the World Bank’s head ever since the organization’s founding. (John Cassidy wrote about Kim last week.)

But one of Kim’s two opponents, the Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former managing director of the Bank, is not going down without a fight. (The other candidate is José Antonio Campo, the former finance minister of Colombia.) In what could be called fighting words, Okonjo-Iweala said this week that the vote for Zoellick’s successor will be a “hypocrisy” test. Okonjo-Iweala has said that if rich nations really want to recognize the contributions of the world’s emerging economies, it’s time for the World Bank’s leader to come from somewhere other than the United States.

The Nigerian leader, who has been finance minister since August—it’s her second stint in the job—has been endorsed by African giants like South Africa and the African Union, but her own constituency’s opinion of her is mixed. Okonjo-Iweala’s popularity took a deep dive only two months ago, when her attempt to suddenly and completely remove fuel subsidies throughout the country ignited mass protests and led to a severe slowdown of local trade and business for ordinary Nigerians. Though she told citizens that government deregulation of the petroleum industry would free up funds for other uses, and would be better for the economy, the message was understandably lost in a nation where the fruits of oil wealth go only to a privileged few. She gained accolades for restructuring Nigeria’s debt during her first run as finance minister, under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, but she has yet to change the image a significant portion of Nigerians have of her: an economist clearly adored by the West who has yet to make a concrete difference in changing the way Nigeria’s finances are managed.

The point Okonjo-Iweala is making with her candidacy is a compelling one, though. The agreement that gives the leadership of the World Bank to an American (and the International Monetary Fund to a European) is beginning to look embarrassingly outdated. At a time when Africa is the fastest-growing continent and the economies of India and China are booming, and at a point when innovative policies are needed to help poor countries develop in a sustainable way, someone like the Harvard and M.I.T.-educated Okonjo-Iweala, who can bring developed and developing together, appears very attractive. Just yesterday, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa met for a summit in New Delhi at which they both raised their concern at their relative powerlessness in the International Monetary Fund and expressed their ire over the risky monetary policies of Western nations that have caused further instability in their own countries.

President Obama has been pushing for Kim even more strongly in recent days, and an upset is doubtful. Still, the politics of this race may have one unintended effect: the leaders at the New Delhi conference announced that they had instructed their finance ministers to look into the possibility of starting a development bank of their own.

The agent’s dismissal gives the appearance that the agency buckled under political pressure, and sets a highly disturbing precedent.

Asian-Americans, a largely made-up group united by historical marginalization, are desperate for a movie like this one to be perfect, because the opportunity to make another might not arrive for another quarter century.